According to Business Leader, the first trillionaire is expected sometime before 2030. As the wealth of nations continues to flow towards the world’s richest business leaders and inheritors, the richest self-made billionaires are arguably falling behind. For now, in 2023, the world’s top five self-made billionaires’ combined worth is just under $300 billion.
Forbes’ annual “400 Self-Made Score: From Silver Spooners to Bootstrappers” ranks the world’s billionaires on a ten-point scale to determine which of the world’s wealthy members are responsible for making their own wealth and which simply inherited their fortunes. This list of 2023′s richest self-made billionaires exclusively lists those that earned a self-made score of six or higher, which Forbes said means they “built their own company or established their fortune on their own.”
The net worth of each self-made billionaire has been sourced by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Steve Ballmer
As the former CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer is the richest self-made billionaire on this list with a net worth of $101 billion. Ballmer stepped down from the helm of the world’s biggest software maker back in 2014, but remains a shareholder in Redmond — the software company responsible for the Windows operating system. Ballmer also owns the L.A. Clippers basketball team.
Sergey Brin
Valued at $92.6 billion, Sergey Brin is the co-founder of Google’s parent company Alphabet. The company, which reported $258 billion in revenue in 2021, also owns Gmail, Android and YouTube.
Mark Zuckerberg
Famously responsible for the co-founding of Facebook, now Meta Platforms, Mark Zuckerberg is currently valued at $80.1 billion. With 3.6 billion monthly users, his company reported $117 billion in revenue last year.
George Soros
Ranked all the way down at number 254 on Bloomberg’s list of 2023 billionaires, George Soros is “only” valued at $8.5 billion. The founder of Soros Fund Management, Soros transformed his hedge fun into a family office back in 2011. Now the business helps manage the billionaire’s multi-billion-dollar philanthropic endowments.
David Steward
Once an associate executive for the Boy Scouts of America, David Steward is now a self-made billionaire with a net worth of $5.68 billion. Steward is the co-founder and majority owner of World Wide Technology, a information technology services provider. With an annual revenue of roughly $14.5 billion, the company provides cloud computing services, digital security services and employs roughly 8,000 people.
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